1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus and a maintenance method for the printing apparatus, and in particular, an ink jet printing apparatus and a maintenance method for the printing apparatus, which perform a nozzle recovery operation by pressurizing the inside of a printing head.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an ink jet printing apparatus, degradation of the printing quality may be caused due to improper ink ejection. This is because clogging is caused by thickening or adhesion of dried ink in a nozzle ejecting ink, or by mixture of paper powders, dusts, air bubbles or the like into the ink in the nozzle. Accordingly, in order to suppress the improper ink ejection caused by these factors, maintenance of a printing head is needed.
In order to suppress such improper ink ejection, there is known a maintenance method of providing a pressurizing unit in an ink supplying path to pressurize the inside of the printing head, thereby discharging the ink in the head and removing foreign substances, air bubbles and the like in the printing head (Refer to, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-19139).
However, in a line-type printing head, after a pressurizing operation, a large amount of ink may remain on a surface of the nozzle. The remaining ink is removed by a wiping operation using a blade and a suction unit.
However, in the case where the ink on the surface of the nozzle needs to be sufficiently removed, a large number of times of the wiping operation is required. As the number of times of the wiping operation increases, a maintenance time becomes longer, and for example, when the pressurizing operation is performed prior to a printing operation, a time required to start printing increases and thus, the time when the printing is completed becomes late. Furthermore, by the fact that the number of times of the wiping operation is large, the durability of the printing head may not be kept, having a negative effect on the quality of an image.